


Before the taking of toast and tea.

by Mellaithwen



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Baking, Community: then_theres_us, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Insecurity, Insomnia, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-22
Updated: 2010-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-18 01:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1410364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She mixes the batter, by the light of the streetlamp that sits beyond the garden fence. Twirling the spoon around the thick substance until it’s smooth, licking the excess off of the spoon as soon as it’s all separated and eventually put into the oven. She can’t sleep, but what she doesn’t realise, is that neither can the Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the taking of toast and tea.

**Author's Note:**

> title from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot
> 
> Written for challenge 34 at then_theres_us (3rd place)

In the middle of the night, Rose pads down the carpeted stairs of the home she shares with the Doctor. She treads as quietly as she can into the kitchen and hisses at the cold of the kitchen tile against her bare feet.

The clock slowly ticks past midnight as she gathers everything she needs to bake. She measures out the flour and baking powder, the grains falling together in the bowl with the egg and butter and coffee essence tossed in. She mixes the batter, by the light of the streetlamp that sits beyond the garden fence. Twirling the spoon around the thick substance until it’s smooth, licking the excess off of the spoon as soon as it’s all separated and eventually put into the oven.

She can’t sleep, but what she doesn’t realise, is that neither can the Doctor.

His driving license says his name is John Smith, and his birth date is well within this century, but he’s still the Doctor to her. And he’s standing in the doorway of the kitchen watching her as she watches the baking tray underneath the orange oven glow.

Her nightgown is bunched up around the waist of her pyjama shorts and the early morning air is cold on the back of her bare legs. In sixteen minutes the room will be filled with the smell of freshly made cupcakes. She’ll let them cool and then add icing. She’ll add coffee essence to that too. She’ll pipe it onto the cakes, and smooth it around with a fork.

She has a routine, you see, and it’s one she’s perfected to a tee. She doesn’t need a recipe, or light for that matter. In the days after bad wolf bay she would lie awake at night—whenever she couldn’t hear the Doctor’s voice—and she would bake endlessly. She would be as quiet as she could and clean everything up as she went along. The only difference in the morning would be a casserole in the fridge, or a pie, or a cake, or a pudding or _something_. She’d tune out the world and pretend she was anywhere else, watching as before her eyes the mixing and meshing of all these different things came together to make something new.

Her thoughts would be consumed by measurements and a tablespoon of this and a teaspoon of that. _time for you and me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions and for a hundred visions and revisions before the taking of toast and tea._ Instead of the Doctor and _please please let me find a way back._

 _When the sun’s up, I’ll start breakfast,_ she thinks. _We’ll start with eggs—maybe his tastebuds have changed. Maybe they haven’t changed at all. And sausages, there’ll have to be sausages, and bacon, and toast, and beans..._

 _Come to think of it,_ she realises, _I’ve never made hashbrowns before. Maybe I should have started with that instead of the cupcakes._

_Maybe I should have made teacakes._

_Or pancakes._

_Or waffles._  
She doesn’t expect his arms to snake around her waist, and interrupt her thoughts as she’s pulled in closer to the warmth of his chest. She doesn’t expect him to nuzzle his nose against her neck, or for his low moan to make the butterflies in her stomach swell and her heart pound.

She thinks about how this never happened when she baked before. How he never appeared and made everything alright, but now he can, each and every morning.

“You’re up early.” He whispers, smiling as she twists in his hold to face him.

“So are you.” She says in concern, not knowing that the bags under his eyes are just as big as hers.

He looks around at the specks of ingredients all around and at the cupcakes sitting in the oven.

“I’d have come down earlier if I’d known you were baking.”

“You burn _toast_ , John.” She says, trying out the name, testing it out aloud, trying to visualise the Doctor before her with a name, instead of just a title. “And you burn it every single time.”

“True, but I can learn.”

She doesn’t refute that, and when he leans in for a kiss, she doesn’t refuse that either.

He helps her with the icing and they lick the bowl until the streetlamp’s light disappears outside because the sun has risen and it has become obsolete. They fall asleep on the sofa, slipping into one another’s arms so comfortable that they wonder why they found it so hard to sleep in the first place.

* * *

Rose sleeps, and the Doctor watches the rise and fall of her chest with complete adoration. He sees her eyes dart back and forth underneath her eyelids, and finds himself enamoured by the way her eyelashes fall on her cheeks when her eyes are closed.

She shifts a little in bed, and stops when the Doctor’s hand becomes intertwined in hers.

He starts to wonder what to make for breakfast. He starts to wonder about cereal and toast and milk and fresh fruit and how best to create a spread that will impress Rose as she yawns and makes her way downstairs come morning. He wonders how to make a croissant and makes the decision to find out in the morning and try it out for himself.

(He manages it on his fifteenth attempt, and Rose pops the pastry into her mouth with a great big smile on her face that tells him in silence of his triumph.)

* * *

It starts with Rose trying to distract herself from the grief of losing him.

She finds solace in the meanderings of the kitchen, and gets pretty good at it. The Doctor recognises the coping mechanism in those first few awkward nights, and intrigued, he tries it out for himself. Always curious, he’s desperate to find his niche. Sometimes they bake together, sometimes apart, sometimes they cook dinner and he’s restricted to smaller duties—sometimes he insists on cooking for her and refuses to let her anywhere near the kitchen.

It starts with pain, and hurting, and tears falling into the mixing bowl when the recipe doesn’t call for it—and it ends with The Doctor presenting his achievements to Rose to prove that he still _can_. That he can impress even with one heart beating instead of two.

He doesn’t realise that it’s completely unnecessary. That he’s wonderful just as he is, as her love, as her partner, as her solace and grace.

He’s a little slow on the uptake, is our Doctor.

* * *

He doesn’t realise any of these things until a warm Friday afternoon in May.

Rose is leaving the post office when the Doctor appears in front of her. In his outstretched palm there’s a clear package, tied with white string, filled with gingerbread men.

She laughs.

“You really need to start baking something else.” She tells him, because he has a habit of cooking something until he can physically cook it no more.

“Don’t tell me you’re tired of them already, I only just got the hang of making it without the recipe.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having to look at a recipe to cook something.”

“Yes, but this way I know I don’t need one.” He tells her. This means he doesn’t need instructions. He is capable. He can do it.

“Right.” She replies, walking along with him down the high street.

“How did you know I was at the post office?”

“Process of elimination.”

“Meaning what, exactly?

“Meaning, I may have potentially left my phone in the living room and forgotten my keys, and looked in every shop window until I saw you standing there...”

“Oh Doctor,” she grins. “You always make the silliest things seem so sweet.”

“ _Doctor_ , you haven’t called me that in a while.” He says—half intending to keep it to himself, half intrigued to see what she would say.

“I thought you were happy as John?” She replies confused, unsure if she has done something wrong.

“I am, _I am,_ ”

I’m happy with you, I’m happy to be here, I’m not complaining, I’m not.  
He doesn’t say.

“I just... _John_ didn’t do all of those things... _I_ didn’t do all of those things, but when you call me Doctor, it’s almost as though I did do those great and terrible things. I paraded and conquered and danced and ran _with you_...”

“You did.” She whispers, her hand trailing up to the side of his neck, fingertips curling their way around his brown hair. “You’re him and he’s you, and I love you all the same, John, _Doctor._ ”

They kiss and Rose thinks the Doctor tastes like flour and fear. There’s doubt in his eyes—his insecurities kept quiet until this very moment in the middle of the street, passers by paying no them no heed as they go about their day. There are tiny bits of gingerbread dough in the tufts of his hair, and he still seems so unsure, but he’s smiling. Just about. And his hand is firm in hers, a strong grip that makes her think _we’ll get there, we will, in the end._

 

 -Fin


End file.
